


If These Walls Could Talk

by fid_gin



Category: The Walking Dead (TV)
Genre: F/M, I Don't Even Know, house pov
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-03-21
Updated: 2015-03-21
Packaged: 2018-03-18 20:30:03
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 403
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3582933
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fid_gin/pseuds/fid_gin





	If These Walls Could Talk

What would they say?

Would they tell you about Before - the mortuary years, lovingly cradling the dead instead of being repulsed by them? Would they tell you of the family who lived there, who restored broken faces and comforted grieving relatives? Would they tell you about a home filled with a quiet, contemplative love?

Or would they tell you about After - the dead invaders who breached the walls and killed everything alive inside, the screams and the blood and the broken fingernails of corpses scratching down the lengths of the outer boards?

Would they tell you about loneliness...about months standing empty, visited only by mysterious drifters who cleaned and replenished supplies but who never stayed? Would they describe the yawning, cavernous ache of a home with no occupants? Even houses need love, maybe more than anything else does.

And then would they tell you about a man and a young woman, tired and dirty and sad, seeking not to steal or raid but only to shelter? About hearing the sound of laughter for the first time in so, so long...about songs sung in the parlour and food eaten in the kitchen? Would they tell you how the man, setting alarms outside, paused in his work to lean against the house and ask a god he didn't believe in to keep both of them, particularly the girl, safe? The house had sworn silently she would do her best to help. It wasn't, as it turned out, enough.

And if these walls could talk would they tell you how, some time later, long after the man and the woman had run screaming into the night and the parameter of the house had once more become an empty shell, how the man had come back? How he'd been alone this time, and how he'd wandered from room to room, touching the piano in the parlour and speaking only one word: "Beth"? How he'd unpacked several jars of clear liquid which he'd splashed liberally around the house and on her walls and all _over_ the piano, and how he'd tossed a lit match over his shoulder as he'd left by the front door?

These walls, this house, would tell you all of these things if it could...but instead it just burns as Daryl watches it go, the high flames reflected in the tear tracks on his filthy face, until all that's left is ashes.


End file.
